


Never Trust the Teller

by archea2



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Books, Brotherly Love, But He loves his son Castiel, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Family, Friendship, Gen, God's A-first parenting - Freeform, Humor, Season/Series 11 Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-09
Updated: 2016-08-09
Packaged: 2018-08-07 16:34:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7721929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/archea2/pseuds/archea2
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"We're going Interactive Lit," Charlie explained, giving the book to Castiel instead. "I mean, Moondoor was fine, but, y'know, we wanna up our game. So I got in touch with Columbia's Humanities PR, and she's all kinds of hot – um, on the project. Only, we have to choose a part. Right now it's a tie between Chastity and Temperance."</p><p>"Oh. Yeah, that would be Sam's department."</p><p>Sam rolled his eyes. "The Temperance section has witches, murder-suicide, King Arthur, and a good-time house called the Bower of Bliss. Lurk more, jerk."</p><p>"Wow." Dean, the last plate handed, kept his hand held out. "Can I have the book?"</p><p>(Or: Dean takes to the classics, Sheriff Mills quotes a nursery rhyme, Bobby’s memory is celebrated, Sam has an Egyptian-themed freakout - and Castiel enlightens his friends with his knowledge of stories, storytellers, and why they should never be trusted.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Never Trust the Teller

"Not at mealtimes, kiddo."   
  
Dean's attempt to glare their honorary Woman of Letters into due respect for his glazed ham drew a blank. Charlie's eye perked up, delivered a sweet wink and went back to business.  
  
"What are you..." Sam leant sideways to peek at the cover title. "Oh,  _The Faerie Queene_! Good stuff. Got to the goblin war yet?"  
  
"Less fairy-ing, more frying." Dean clapped his hands – an incisive gesture, if only he'd remembered to take off his baking mitts. He made as if to snatch the volume out of Charlie's hands, only to recoil, mouth pursed and scandalized. "Sammy, you been reading  _poetry_? Cas! Exorcism. Now."   
  
"Don't, Cas. He's just kidding."  
  
"Am not. Emphatically, no. Next thing I know, it'll be a doily under your beer, and then what?"  
  
"We're going Interactive Lit," Charlie explained, giving the book to Castiel instead. "I mean, Moondoor was fine, but, y'know, we wanna up our game. So I got in touch with Columbia's Humanities PR, and she's all kinds of hot - um, on the project. Only, we have to choose a part. Right now it's a tie between Chastity and Temperance."  
  
"Oh. Yeah, that would be Sam's department."  
  
Sam rolled his eyes. "The Temperance section has witches, murder-suicide, King Arthur, and a good-time house called the Bower of Bliss. Lurk more, jerk."  
  
"Wow." Dean, the last plate handed, kept his hand held out. "Can I have the book?"  
  
"Actually, it was the Bower of Pain." Castiel gave them his own Heaven-brand stern look. "In the unpublished draft. Complete with shackles, whips and recreational enemas, only they called it clyster at the time. Spenser thought it would rhyme nicely with blister. He tested it on the patrons of the Dog and Whistle, when quaffing a cup incognito, and..."  
  
"Wait." Charlie and Sam had spoken in one accord. Charlie piped on excitedly. "You knew Spenser?"  
  
Castiel drew himself up in quiet dignity. "I was a guardian of humanity. I  _did_  oversee some of its representatives over the centuries."  
  
"Soooo." Dean sucked his lower lip slowly out, oblivious to the cooling ham. "Any idea what became of that draft?"  
  
A wistful tilt of mouth. "The Queen was not amused. Elizabeth, that is. She was just putting the finishing touches to  _Titus Andronicus_ , and ..."  
  
" _What_?!"  
  
Castiel smirked. Or showed the closest to a smirk his strong-and-silent face had yet hosted. "If I tell you, do I get a doily for my beer?"

 

* * *

 

Angel Radio wasn't a patch on Hunter Radio. A conclusion reached by Castiel two days after the ham dinner, when his phone lit up with a DEAN summons only for a woman's voice to greet his eardrum.

"Sheriff Jody Mills. I hope I'm not –"  
  
" _Claire_ ," Castiel said under his breath. He was about to transsubstantiate himself into lightspeed when she said "Oh no, don't worry, Claire's fine. More than fine. Not so sure about the rest of the house, once she and Alex are done with their water feud, but I'm not calling about –"  
  
The speaker was momentarily drowned. Castiel made out Dean's voice ("Wet button-up contest!") among the high-pitched whoops, and, reassured, held the call.  
  
"...Sorry about that. No, I was... I was hoping you'd answer a question for me."  
  
"Of course," Castiel said, hoping he did not sound nervous. He _had_ asked if he could help, but this was a small-change case, the Winchesters had assured him. A local variation on ye old werewolf lore, implicating the librarian's dachshund. "Let me know how I can assist you."  
  
Curiously, his offer was met with silence. The revelers' cries became muted, as if Jody had stepped into a more retired venue. "...Pumpkin eater," came at last.  
  
Oh. Castiel knotted his brows, scanning the crowded shelves for guidance. "You’re hunting a weresquirrel?"  
  
"No, no." Her voice faltered, firmed up. "I was... I just want to know... Sam and Dean said you might be able to tell me who wrote that. That little rhyme – Peter, Peter, pumpkin eater." Still firmer. "Please."  
  
What Castiel knew about authors could have filled the Babel Tower before it hit the crumple zone. What he knew about faith and its _quia absurdum_ tenet could fill the sky above. He did not question, did not waver.   
  
"It wasn't written," he said. "In your country, it was told by a house servant named Zilleh to the child in her care, one Peter Delaney. She made up the rhyme to amuse him on a rainy day, October 29., while they looked out the window at the pumpkin patch. And he never forgot how it made his heart glad, although her name was forgotten by him and everyone else by the time it was published."  
  
"I'm glad," she said, although he could hear the undertone of tears. None of this made sense, but he had faith that it would, somehow; that this riddle of glad and sad and _who_ and _why_ would crack itself for him, brittle and brilliant, in the manner of all human clues.  
  
"I used to read for my boy." Castiel waited some more. "Owen. At night, every night before I put him to sleep. This was his favorite."  
  
Castiel waited.   
  
"I won't forget," she said, and the next thing he knew, Claire's voice was on, a warm ring to it as she spoke his name, and another story had begun.

 

* * *

 

"Laptop happy hour," Dean said, grin jubilant, fingers already chatting up the keys. He glanced up at their guest. "You good, Cas? Wanna fly the friendly Web with me?"  
  
"Adult-friendly," Sam warned his own screen.  
  
Castiel shook his head. "I have my own educational program," he said. "Sam, may I borrow your bedroom?"  
  
"Free of charge." A beat, as Sam's eyes moved to Dean. " _And_  stowaway donut crumbs."  
  
Castiel did not stay for the next come-back. This was  _Downton Abbey_  happy hour, and he knew that reruns, for reasons best kept out of etymology, only showed each episode once. Soon enough, he was sitting on Sam's bed, taking in a flow of data. Somewhere along the last millennia, he had missed on the fact that there were white ties and black ties, and that wearing the latter at a dinner-party was akin to a fall from grace. Close enough to Lucifer and Michael’s Saturday Night bickers on plumology; less likely to result in the unscripted birth of Popocatepetl.  
  
"...Dude?" A curt rap at Sam's door brought him back to earth. Dean was three steps into the room, his laptop under one arm, the other swung back for the knock. "Mind if I come in?"  
  
"You're in, Dean."  
  
"That's the spirit!" Dean sauntered further in. "So, I was wondering..."  
  
"Dean. I am currently instructing myself."  
  
Dean spared Lord Grantham a flick of the wrist. "No sweat, man. The whole British-on-Turkish action was two seasons ago. So. There's that book I'm reading online..."  
  
This got him Castiel's attention. "A book?"  
  
"Uh-uh." Dean flumped down at his side, committing his laptop to Castiel's lap. "A classic, man. _Very_ instructive. But, I don't know, I thought I'd get a first-hand review before I read on. Here, look." He pointed to the screen. "Guy says he scored all over Europe because he was over six feet. Truth or lie?"  
  
"Dean..."  
  
Dean prodded the screen again. "Man. You never know where a job might land you."  
  
"Casanova" - Castiel spoke each syllable with long-suffering clarity - "was four feet two and took advantage of the confusion between French and Italian measures. Not to mention the baroque heel boot. Charisma has very little to do with size, Dean."  
  
"...Oh? Oh." Dean retrieved his computer. But he showed no sign of leaving. Instead, his voice dropped to a sharp hush. "Um, speaking of..."  
  
Castiel channeled his inner Sam and pointed his index finger at the door.  
  
"Knew it!" Dean punched the air above his head, relief loud and clear. "Ha! Who's your daddy,  _Little_  Giacomo?"  
  
"Try chapter 1," Castiel began, but Dean was already up, out and whistling in the hallway. Sighing, Castiel turned his gaze back to the screen. Yes, Lord Grantham was still having a mid-life crisis about having misled his white tie. Well, well. Say what you will about humankind, at least it let purity trump their hors-d'oeuvres.

 

* * *

 

Sam was the one who never asked.

This surprised Castiel, who had pegged Sam for the nosier brother when it came to knowledge. Yet Sam, whenever found with a book, kept his nose to the pages, merely raising his head for a brief, warm smile. And so Castiel had to wonder, because Sam was a scholar at heart, with a learning curve steeper than the Great Wall of China and equally visible from outer space.

Perhaps Sam was trying to atone for Dean's recent dig at literary quizzes. 

While Castiel was wondering, fate struck again. The bunker's oldest and dustiest phone, a relic from the Age of Bakelite, crackled to life. A baffled Sam took the call; a baffled Dean found himself booking flight tickets to Washington before he could say _Christo_ ; and everyone's learning curve took a U-turn with the discovery of a First Lady of Letters. Legacies, it turned out, worked in various if mysterious ways. There was a bunker only because there had been an Eleanor Roosevelt with generous private funds, and while "Babs" had kept it a secret from FDR, she had dropped a word to Ladybird, who'd told Mamie, who'd told Jackie, etc., and please not to tell Barack, who had enough on his plate fighting the normal good fight.  
  
"...Right," Dean exhaled, while the speaker handed each Winchester a glass of water and went on to explain about the ghosts in her office. None of them harmful, really. Just making it hard to concentrate, with George Washington hemming and coughing, and Teddy Roosevelt's "yee-haw!" morning routine.  
  
The culprit was the wallpaper. The vintage  _grasscloth_  wallpaper. Which happened to be vintage papyrus, its lovely cranes and faux Egyptian design a dead-on copy of the Book of the Dead - Castiel was able to confirm - opening a portal between this world and the next. He texted back the required sigil; then, after a moment's reflection, "Best of luck to the First Gent". Case closed.

Or so he'd have thought, if Sam hadn't flown home first. (Dean, he learned, had rescheduled his vacation week and was hitching his way back from the Eastern Coast.)  
  
Sam came home first, and the first thing Sam did was to hunt down the Book of the Dead.   
  
Castiel watched him as he read. Watched Sam's face in the half-gold, half-gloom expanse of their common room. Castiel knew there had been a time when Sam had looked less than his age, before the chiseling years had lanked his cheeks and left marks of guilt around his eyes and mouth. Even as he read, the marks deepened; until Sam raised his head slowly and said, his voice expressionless, "It was Purgatory, wasn't it?"  
  
"What are you –"  
  
Sam turned the book over, revealing the page, and Castiel knew the monsters before he saw them. Sam was heart-deep in the  _Duat_  section, the wild afterlife land of mounds and caves peopled with "slaughterers" – snake- and crocodile-like hybrids, against which the Book provided every useful spell.  
  
"It was there," Sam said. "In every library, even on the damn Internet. Leviathans. Purgatory. And I never looked. All that time,  _all_ the answers, and I, I…"  
  
"Sam," Castiel said. And then - louder, because there was a time for tact and a time for salutary collisions - "shut up."

"But..."  
  
"What you are reading..." Castiel shut his eyes briefly. "The scribe who wrote this was a good man. He was a clever man, with a unique view of his people's flaws. His gods were not my God, but when he called on Ra to help him save his brethren from perdition, Heaven heard him. The words you are reading are not his. They're mine, Sam."  
  
Sam stared his confusion.  
  
"As I said, the man was wise. He lived in a time when might was ill-shared and ill-used, and he knew that fear can be a virtuous motivator. He thought that in describing the afterlife as a struggle for peace, he would incite his people to, well, practice ahead. To...tame their inner crocodiles. So to speak."  
  
"And you...helped write this?"  
  
"I knew about Purgatory," Castiel said quietly. "I also knew that Purgatory was not made for his kind. What I offered him were images, strong and true, but fiction in a man-made book. The spells were his – good enough to spur a ghost forward, but of no use against the real thing."  
  
He could hear Sam's breath hiss softly out of dry lips. "They wouldn't have rescued Dean?"  
  
"No. At best, they would have enforced his courage."  
  
Sam chuckled, a sudden boyish sound. "Damn waste of time."  
  
Castiel grinned, tugging the book to him. "Now, what mattered – truly mattered – to that scribe was if he'd be reunited with his cat. Her name was Nekhebet, the Protectress. A green-eyed rogue she was, too quick for her own good, but very handsome. And, to him, very sacred."  
  
"Were they…?"  
  
"Oh yes," Castiel said happily. "Soulmates, the two of them. They're sharing a Heaven right now. That is, a Field of Reeds. Where there is no darkness because the sun always shines on the beautiful Lily Lake. Look." He patted the book like an old friend, and the pages rose and fell of their own accord under his touch. "Here. It's a good place."  
  
Sam brought his chair closer while Castiel pushed the book under the Art Deco lamp, letting it cast its gold over the green pictures. There was a time for hunting and there was a time for peaceful reading, and read they did - on to the stroke of eight, and Dean's gloating call about busting his clambake record.

 

* * *

 

The Winchesters didn't do birthdays. As Dean once tried to explain, they were getting freakin’ hard to tell apart from deathdays, and rebirthdays, let alone Doomsdays, and fondant was a bitch on his teeth anyway. As a rule, the Winchesters gave commemoration the once-and-for-all kick.

Which hardly explained why Castiel's phone rang on an April morning, and a chipper male voice invited him to Bobby Singer's quarters for a "potluck anniversary, hombre - uh, ángel".   
  
Castiel summoned himself in a panic, only to find the brothers lounging in the open grass, beer at hand. There was an odd peace out and about, perhaps because Bobby's waste land had finally rounded its transition to a green waste land. The cars lined up before the gate had tall oxeye daisies leaning into the windows, and there was a bee in Bobby's old truck, napping on the wheel. Moss ran wild over every charred beam. Only the iron gate stood tall and proud, proclaiming its  _SALVAGE_  to the world. Castiel nodded. Bobby Singer might not have been a Man of Letters, but a Man of Rescue he'd been, was and would ever be, come hail or Ragnarok.  
  
"...rugrat numero uno on the way," a third boy was saying. He wore a straw hat and appeared to be eating raw lamb ribs from a pink-dotted Tupperware. As he stepped up to them, Castiel knew his voice for that of the anon party host. "So I told myself, better not put off to mañana what you can hurrah today, and seeing that you guys were headed to Dakota, uh, why not hurrah two birds with a..."  
  
"Congrats, Garth!" Sam raised his beer. "Here, have a sip - a  _sip_ , mind."  
  
Garth sipped, giggled, bowed. "And one to grow on, amigo."  
  
"Awesome." Dean beamed at the expectant father. "So, uh, you and Beth stocking up on beef stock formula?"  
  
Castiel thought of days past at a Gas-'n-Sip. Of holding a small, breathtaking bundle of life in the crook of his arm. Emotions flooded him, the irresistible urge to show himself worthy of the occasion. He moved his true-blue eyes to Garth. " _El hacer el padre por su hijo_ ," he said forcibly, " _es hacer por sí mismo_." When everyone stared back and no one answered, he tacked on a "hombre".  
  
The silence went on, until Sam doubled over in laughter and said, "You've been Cassed!", which apparently kickstarted a new guffaw.  
  
"Cas," Dean cut in quickly, "Garth doesn't speak Spanish."  
  
"He does." Castiel was adamant.  
  
"Doesn't."  
  
"Yes, he..." But this was Dean, who thought accidents didn't happen accidentally, and Castiel knew better than to nominate him for a debate on logic. He turned to Garth. "Do you?"  
  
"Eh, less or less." Garth beamed on them all. "But I think I got the gist of it. What a father does for his son, he does for himself, right? Nicely put, man."  
  
"Cervantes put it." Castiel frowned. "Or so he said. The truth is, he stole it from a mule doctor, who heard it from the local priest, whose carnal assignations with the barber's wife..."  
  
"Wow, wow, wow." Garth leant forward, eager and wide-eared. "How d'you know all that?"   
  
"Yeah, meet the new Oprah. Been there, read that, got the T-shirt."  
  
"Dean, I don't own a -"  
  
"I read  _Don Quixote_  at college," Garth cut in excitedly. "And then I read the Rob Davis comics, and the dog comics, and the Donkey Hotey special on _Heroes Illustrated_. Ho boy, that was the tale for me."  
  
"I bet." Dean matched the wide grin. "It’s a fun story. Lanky-ass guy thinks he's a badass and takes to the road, hyped up to Rambo the big bad’uns, only nobody takes him seriously and he keeps getting bitten... in... the..." Dean's voice drawled to a stop, while Sam made urgent  _Seriously, Dean?_  noises over the breeze. "Dude, wait! I didn’t mean..."

"It's all right, Dean." A level-gazed Garth set the now empty Tupperware down on the ground. "I believe you. And even if you did, I wouldn't mind. Man,  _we_  fight the big bad'uns - you and Sam and Bobby’n'team - and nobody on God's green earth gives us a second thought. We make idjits of ourselves, day in day out. And we get bitten, my friend – body and soul, every blessed day, and then? Up and back on the road. If there ever was a saint patron of hunters, his name is Cervantes."  
  
"Hear, hear." Sam had his soft-rock face. "Thief and all."  
  
"Was he?" Dean asked brusquely, turning on the hospitable grass to look Cas in the eye. "A Man of Letters?"  
  
"Not as you understand these words." Castiel paused to reflect. "He had a run-in with pirates."

"Good enough in _my_ book."

"And he nearly got caught by a Djinn once. But it took one look inside Miguel Cervantes’ head, and when it saw the life he'd dreamt up, not for himself but for all of Spain, and how it was nearly finished, the Djinn let him go. Cervantes put it down to the jerez. Then he rode home and wrote the last words of his tale, which are" – Castiel paused again, not for a beat, not for a breath, but for his next words to sink in - " _that no errant knight died such a peaceful and blessed death as Alonso Quixote the Good Man, better known as Don Quixote de la Mancha_."  
  
"Amen, Mitch." A rough-voiced Dean grabbed another beer. He palmed it, twisted it open and raised it high in the barley-coloured sunlight. "To Bobby’n'team."

"Bobby’n'team," Sam echoed, eyes to the sun.  
  
Winchesters didn’t do birthdays. Or deathdays. But they could be amenable to hope days, with a little help – Castiel caught Garth's pale lashes blinking _damn right_ – from their friends.

 

* * *

 

And then, hard upon the fat days, the lean days struck.

It came to pass that the Darkness was released, which was when everyone’s plans, hopes, values and sanity went on a lemming run. Sam got visions. Dean got himself a girlfoe (Dean's word). And Castiel, grounded home on strict instructions to get better, got to watch it all.

It hurt to be helpless. Sam prayed, so Castiel went to the hidden grave in his heart to try and dig up words, but that faith had sailed long ago. Revelation was an inside job now. Had to be. Had to be the lore, which was all they were left with.

In his line of work, the everlasting had been top-of-the-charts value, and there was a trace of it in old books. They endured, their bindings giving off a coarse clean smell, their pages rustling back to life after decades of rest on the shelves. Even the typewritten reports, their pages thin as onion skin, gave him a thin comfort. They had no idea who Amara was, but they helped. They healed, in their own way.

They healed Castiel by putting him to sleep.

Or so he deduced when his eyes opened, not to the bunker’s chiaroscuro but a brilliant afternoon light. It fell on a landscape with one figure, a man, his beard a finishing touch to the russets and oranges of the great pine trees.

"Hello," the man said, waving from a rough pine bench. The trees around him were plied with round red fruit, leaving a sweet tang in the air. "Taking a break, too?"

"What is this?" Castiel looked wildly around him. Not that he couldn’t tell half of the answer. The Sunday River Valley, Maine, was where he stood. Which left _why_ open, and Castiel tipped his head forward to meet it full front. "Is this... are you writing about my vessel dreaming this?" 

"Mmm? Ah, nah. _Nah_ –" as Chuck tossed his apple core aside. He shrugged. "Like I said, on a break."

Castiel looked at him, struggling not with the words, but with the pang they gave him. The pang, the panic. The adrenaline of loss, harshly reawakened.

"Com’ere," Chuck said. He patted the bench next to him with a smile, and Castiel’s steps dragged him across the grove. "Have a little rest with me. Maine is super nice. The sea! The cider! _The Maine Coon!_ "

Castiel looked down. There was a Maine Coon on his lap, purring and kneading his trousered legs with slightly-too-sociable claws.

"I don’t need a cat," he said indignantly. Chuck gave him a plaintive look. "Or a rest. I need enlightenment! I need you to be a prophet again. Your story… your story is History, is His Story. You have no right to hold it up."

"You’ve got the wrong Stein." Chuck shook his head, his lower tones placidly off-key as usual. "I’m a Jeanne C. at best, not a Gertrude."

"My Father…" The next words felt dead on his lips until he forced them out. "Was once called the Author and Finisher of our faith. Hebrews 12," Castiel specified, pausing in his efforts to shove eighteen pounds of cat blissfulness off his knees.

"Man, reviewers, it’s all or nothing with –"

"But there were no Q & A in Heaven. No Bible-slash-Quran cons." Castiel no longer knew why he was entrusting a stranger with his deepest, deep-felt grief, but he soldiered on. It was what he did, and it would take more than Chuck’s startled face to entrench him. "And now I’ll never know what my Father looked like when he was dictating Revelation, I won't be able to ask why he spent so much time on _tzitzit_. Why he favored Aramaic over Enochian, if he sang the Song of Songs, how many tree puns he actually shared with Daniel, even what prompted him to turn that New leaf in Nazareth. He’s gone forever, and all of those who looked upon him are gone, and I…I wish, more than anything, I wish they could have told me…"

He bent his head, suddenly tired by more than the ups and downs of dream-logic. When he lifted it again, the russet landscape was fading out. Gone were the cat and the bench, and the peaceful apple grove. Even Chuck was no longer a real presence at his side. _I’m waking up_ , Castiel thought, but just then everything lit up, as if seen through a white-hot glass, and he felt the cool lightness of a touch on his face. Then a voice, saying _in the Valley of the Shadow_ , and then, nothing.

He opened his eyes. His arms were stretched out on the tabletop, cradling his cheek, books all over his field of vision. Castiel blinked. Waking up wasn’t new: he had passed out and resurfaced in his former lives more times than he cared to record. He didn’t know why this time felt different; why it left him trembling with a great thirsty joy. Slowly, hesitantly, he did what he had never done before: he moved his hand to his own forehead and touched two of his fingers to it, to where he'd felt this caress, cool and yet burning with unspoken love.

Sometimes, tellers lied.

Sometimes, they stole.

Or hid behind a mask. Tellers would say one thing and mean another; more often than not, they left it to others to flash their meanings across time for better or worse. And when tellers were done, like his Father or John Winchester, they got up and left without another word. 

But…

Dean’s voice reached him, sharpened by the bunker’s resident echo. He was speaking to Sam. "Why would God even ask this of you? What proof do we have that it’s real? "

"There was a burning bush. Like in the Bible."

…But they left tales behind. Powerful, lasting tales. Romances and rhymes, and life stories, and symbols and sayings, burning, all of them; carrying a promise of light in their elusive words. He closed his eyes and whispered his Father's words for himself.

_Even though you walk in the Valley of the Shadow of Death, fear no evil, for I am with you._

"What else do we have?" Sam was asking when Castiel got up, pulled into verticality by Heaven’s myriad-voiced call to arms. He didn’t wait for Dean to reply. Dean didn’t trust the teller and would slam his doubt home, not that Castiel could blame him. 

What he could do – and would, to his last beat of wings – was to trust the tale.


End file.
